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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

'Think Communist China’s air is breathable? Think again'

from globe and mail.......

"Today, the United States Embassy, which has a monitoring station on its grounds in east Beijing, broadcast via its Twitter account that the air quality was “hazardous” between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. today, with an air quality index of 344 on the scale of 1 to 500. (Or at least 500 – a level 25 times higher than WHO guidelines – used to be considered the top of the scale. The rating in Beijing surged to an unheard-of 562 one coal-tinged morning last November, prompting the embassy staffer who writes @BeijingAir to famously declare the air “crazy bad.”)

But China doesn’t acknowledge these numbers, or indeed the idea that the air quality here could be hazardous for anyone. The state-run Global Times newspaper said air pollution was only “moderate” Tuesday in Beijing. Unlike the U.S. Embassy Twitter account, it gave no measurements of ozone or PM2.5 particulate matter to back its assertion"...............READ MORE

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